• According to the latest report, Internet Computer (ICP) has introduced Verified Credentials (VCs) to ensure an efficient and trustworthy sharing of personal data. 

• The first application of VC in the ICP ecosystem is the Proof of Unique Humanity (PoUH), which combats the activities of bots. 

Internet Computer Protocol (ICP) has announced that it is introducing Verified Credentials (VCs), a walletless solution that enables the efficient, trustworthy, sharing of personal data while maintaining privacy and control. 

According to the latest roadmap of ICP, VCs are one of the crucial focused areas built on the Internet Identity (II). Also, this internet identity ensures that there is a provision of a robust authentication solution that is based on passkeys rather than seed phrases or passwords.

With this, it is important to note that passkeys are built on standardized technology that protects against phishing attacks. VCs are digital versions of physical credentials that can be easily shared online by holders without the need for service providers to verify the claim. This implies that the VC is connected to users via digital identity providers like Internet Identity. 

According to the CTO of the DFINITY Foundation Jan Camenisch, the new VC feature of the Internet Identity offsets the known challenge for proper authentication. 

The new Verifiable Credentials feature of Internet Identity addresses long-standing problems for online privacy-preserving authentication: all a user needs is a computing device that has a passkey (all recent ones do) and a browser. Apart from dApps on the Internet Computer, traditional systems can also plug in with Internet Identity and allow users to authenticate with Verifiable Credentials, e.g., proving that they are a real person, that they did KYC, or that they are over 18.

Verified Credentials Could Offset Challenges Posed by Bots 

According to reports, the Verified Credentials was officially launched during the Digital Identity unConference Europe (DICE) 2024 in Zurich, Switzerland. Per the disclosure, this groundbreaking initiative comes along with the first application, Proof of Unique Humanity (PoUH), meant to prevent public discourse manipulation on social media. 

This comes at the right time as reports estimate that 49% of the people in the world will head to the polls this year. As disclosed in a 2023 publication by the Queensland University of Technology, there is widespread disinformation by bots with a network of 1,200 automated accounts found on X (formerly of Twitter). 

According to the research, most of these accounts started the conspiracy theory that former US President Donald Trump beat the current president Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. This attracted more than three million impressions, calling for the need for a swift intervention. 

How PoUH Solve These Problems

According to the developers, PoUH prevents people from piloting multiple online accounts by linking a credential to biometric data. In this case, individuals are prevented from creating multiple accounts or taking advantage of a token airdrop by using more than one account. This also appears as a better version of Proof of Humanity which is easier to manipulate. 

Currently, the wallets of most users such as Metamask operate as their universal Web3 identity. With the VC, ICP would make provisions for walletless infrastructure, and tooling to ensure that Credentials are shared, issued, and consumed in a privacy-preserving manner. 

Previously, users authenticating internet Identity to dApp only had access to unique and pseudonymous identifiers. However, they now have additional attributes such as names, age, or residency. With the introduction of the Verified Credentials framework, they can assign identity attributes to Internet Identity. 

At press time, ICP was trading at $7.9 after declining by 10% in the last 24 hours.